V. I. Lenin

The Second Congress Of

The Communist International

Written:August 1920First Published:KommunishiaNo. 3-4, August-September 1920; Published according to the journal textSource:Lenin’sCollected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965,Volume 31, pages 270-272Translated:Julius KatzerTranscription\HTML Markup:David Walters&R. CymbalaCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of theGNU Free Documentation License

The Second Congress of the Communist International
      ended on August 7. A little over a year has elapsed since its
      foundation, during which brief period immense and decisive
      successes have been achieved.

Held a year ago, the First Congress only unfurled the banner of
    communism, around which the forces of the revolutionary
    proletariat were to rally. War was declared on the yellow Second
    International, which unites the social-traitors, who have sided
    with the bourgeoisie against the proletariat and are in alliance
    with the capitalists against the workers’ revolution.

The huge measure of success achieved in a year can be seen,
    among other things, in the fact that the growing sympathy with
    communism among the masses of workers has compelled the withdrawal
    from the Second International of some of its leading European and
    American parties, namely, the French Socialist Party, the German
    and the British “Independent” parties, and the
    American Socialist Party.

In every country of the world the finest representatives of the
    revolutionary workers have already ranged themselves on the side
    of communism, Soviet rule and the dictatorship of the
    proletariat. In all the advanced countries of Europe and America,
    there already exist Communist parties or numerous Communist
    groups. At the Congress which ended on August 7, it was not only
    the heralds of the proletarian revolution who joined forces, but
    delegates from strong and powerful organisations linked with the
    proletarian masses. A world army of the revolutionary
    proletariat-that is what now stands for communism, and, at the
    Congress just ended, received organisational form and a clear,
    precise and detailed programme of action.

The Congress refused to admit immediately into the Communist
    International such parties that still retain in their ranks
    influential representatives of “Menshevism”,
    social-treachery and opportunism, similar to the abovementioned
    parties which have withdrawn from the yellow Second
    International.

In a number of precisely worded resolutions, the Congress
    blocked every avenue of access for opportunism, and demanded a
    total break with it. The incontestable facts reported to the
    Congress showed that the working-class masses are with us, and
    that the opportunists shall now be utterly routed.

The Congress rectified the errors committed in certain
    countries by Communists who were bent on turning to the
    “Left” and denied the need to work in bourgeois
    parliaments, reactionary trade unions, and wherever there are
    millions of workers who are still being duped by the capitalists
    and by their lackeys from among the workers, i.e., by members of
    the yellow Second International.

The Congress created a degree of unity and discipline among the
    world’s Communist parties such as has never before existed
    and will make it possible for the vanguard of the workers’
    revolution to march forward with giant strides to its great goal,
    the overthrow of the yoke of capital.

Thanks to the international conference of working women which
    was organised simultaneously, the Congress will strengthen ties
    with the communist women’s movement.

Communist parties and groups in the East, in the colonial and
    backward countries, which are so brutally robbed, oppressed and
    enslaved by the “civilised” league of predatory
    nations, were likewise represented at the Congress. The
    revolutionary movement in the advanced countries would in fact be
    nothing but a sheer fraud if, in their struggle against capital,
    the workers of Europe and America were not closely and completely
    united with the hundreds upon hundreds of millions of
    “colonial” slaves, who are oppressed by that
    capital.

Great are the military victories of the workers’ and
    peasants’ Soviet Republic over the landowners and the
    capitalists, over the Yudeniches, the Koichaks, and the Denikins,
    the Polish Whites and their accomplices-France, Britain, America
    and Japan.

But greater still is our victory over the minds and hearts of
    the masses of the workers, of all those who toil and are oppressed
    by capital-the victory of the communist ideas and communist
    organisations all over the world.

The revolution of the proletariat, the overthrow of the yoke of
    capitalism, .is on the march and shall come about in every country
    in the world.